ATLANTA – Louisville senior Peyton Siva had played for Rick Pitino through four seasons and 143 games, which in normal human time is like 75 years. There was all that conditioning, all that cajoling, all that instruction, all that patience, all that impatience, a little bit of failure and so many phenomenal successes that resulted from their collaboration. There still was one more game to be contested, though, which meant the coach had no choice but to continue coaching.

So at halftime of the NCAA championship game Monday night at the Georgia Dome, Pitino presented his point guard with a caustic challenge: “Do you know the plays? You keep looking over at me and asking what plays to run.”

During the second half of this thrilling battle with the Michigan Wolverines, Pitino presented his point guard with still more prodding sarcasm: “You’re out of shape … I know what you’re doing, but you’re not in shape. I thought you were.”

How do you win a championship without stars? You win it together. How do you build that sort of togetherness, a bond so indestructible that starters cheer the reserves as they steal away their playing time and glory and everyone weeps out in the open when one of their teammates is shattered? Well, the coach makes everyone equally miserable when there is work to be done, even when that work involves trying to conquer a fabulous basketball team under championship pressure.

“I think when you work as hard as we work, it builds a foundation of love and discipline,” Pitino said. “Because you have to suffer together.”

Louisville’s 82-76 victory over Michigan presented Pitino with his second NCAA championship on the day he was honored with selection to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, joining active coaches Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, Roy Williams of North Carolina and Jim Boeheim of Syracuse.

So now Pitino has coached the BEST team of the past 25 years, and he has coached the best TEAM.

This is the one thing his 1996 Kentucky national champions and his 2013 Louisville national champions have in common: That statement can correctly be made about either, although it helps to shift the accent a bit.

Pitino’s ’96 Wildcats were so richly talented it almost seemed unfair to the rest of college basketball. Eight players who appeared in that year’s Final Four eventually spent time in the NBA, and they were a savagely destructive defensive team.

These Cardinals are nearly their opposite, perhaps the least gifted team to win the title in a quarter century, with still no one the draft analysts figure to be worthy of a lottery-level draft choice, and possibly not even a first-rounder. What they lack in raw ability they cover with toughness and togetherness, the former the difference against the young Wolverines and the latter the ingredient that delivered them through two substantial Final Four comebacks.

Perhaps the most tangible evidence of what an uncommon team this was: forward Luke Hancock, who led the team with 22 points, became the first reserve in the NCAA Tournament’s 75 seasons to be named Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four.

“It’s a one-time thing in life. You never know if you get this opportunity again, so we just left everything out there on the court,” said sophomore forward Chane Behanan, who brutalized the Michigan players with seven offensive rebounds— every single one of them in the second half—and 15 points. “To have the opportunity to come out here to win a championship with my brothers, it’s unbelievable.

“I love these guys like they were my real brothers.”

He is closest of all to Kevin Ware, the reserve guard who suffered a compound leg fracture on what appeared to be a routine play in their Elite Eight game last Sunday against Duke. The Cardinals felt so obviously for him it seemed they’d never redirect their attention toward a basketball game. Ware insisted they refocus on winning the game before leaving to have his leg repaired through surgery, and when he awoke from the anesthesia there was a Final Four trophy near his bed and a brink-of-the-Hall-of-Fame coach to check on him.

“You know, I think the game today is much better than it was in ’96,” Pitino said. “You had no idea who was going to win going into this tournament. I think that’s so much fun as long as the game is well played. Tonight was a great championship game. They were tremendous. We had to beat a tremendous team.”

Michigan played exceptionally well in defeat, particularly at the offensive end, elevating this to the level of such entertaining title games as Kansas-Memphis in 2008, or Duke Arizona in 2001. All-American guard Trey Burke scored 17 second-half points to finish with 24. His backup, Spike Albrecht, replaced Burke when he encountered first-half foul trouble and lit up the Dome with four 3-pointers and 17 points to help the Wolverines build a 12-point lead.

Louisville got four late 3-pointers from Hancock to dig itself out of that predicament and trail only 38-37 at the break, but the coaches spent the halftime period reiterating the defensive gameplan the Cardinals hadn’t exactly followed during the first 20 minutes.

“We did what we were supposed to do in the second half that we should have done in the first: not give up threes,” assistant coach Kevin Keatts said. “One of our goals going into the game was to limit transition, not give up threes and keep them off the offensive glass. We didn’t do a very good job. Thank God for Luke Hancock, saved us going into halftime.”

Defending almost feverishly in the second half, led by Siva’s attacks against the ball, the Cardinals ran the Wolverines off the 3-point line and allowed them only seven attempts and two makes. Michigan shot 55 percent from the field in the second half but needed those threes to counter the foul trouble for center Mitch McGary and the punishment Behanan was administering on the offensive boards.

It was 47-all when Behanan grabbed a rebound of a missed layup by Siva, drew a third foul from McGary and converted two free throws that gave the Cardinals the lead. They never trailed again, and he made certain with a steal from Albrecht that led to a Russ Smith 3-pointer, and then scoring on a beastly tip-in of Wayne Blackshear’s missed layup.

On the perimeter Louisville was not allowed to be as handsy on defense as it prefers, but the line might as well have been bordered by one of those MMA cages. UM freshman Glenn Robinson was not able to compete with the physical maturity Behanan had developed through his second season.

“When the chips are down, things don’t go well, that young man rises to a new level. There’s no question,” Pitino said. “I looked at him today, he shook my hand and said, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll bring it tonight.’ He always rises in big games. He’s 6-6, 6-7; he was a monster tonight.”

As Behanan punished the Wolverines, across the way freshman Montrezl Harrell was smiling and cheering and leaping off the bench toward the elevated court— the way Behanan had applauded Harrell’s stellar performance in the second half of the Big East championship game three weeks earlier.

After rampaging into the title game as the tournament’s most prolific scorer, Smith had a bit of a miserable final and made only 3-of-16 shots. But Hancock scored 22 points and made all five of his 3-point attempts and Siva dominated the second half with 14 of his tournament-best 18 points.

“This is really what a team is,” Siva said. “This is really what college basketball is about: a group of guys who are like family.”